Adding Strawberries....?

[rukkus]

With all of the strawberries around at the moment i'm thinking of adding some when i brew a Hefeweizen. Thoughts on how much i should add and when for a 5g batch.....?

[sub82]

We've found 300g frozen raspberries per gallon to be about right. Maybe a bit more for strawberries if they're not as sharp?

Might be worth freeze thawing them to get more juice from them.

[St. Fursey]

+1 on freeze thawing
I add fruit to the secondary and leave it there until the colour has been extracted from it.

[newToBrew]

Be careful with shop bought frozen fruits I caught the end of a news report on radio yesterday about some kinda contaminated batch being out there


They reccommended boiling em for a minute or 2 and I know people here do that anyway


Just an FYI

[rukkus]

Yea I saw that. Strange there was no recall.

I got my hands on 4kg of fresh strawberries at a good price so I have 2 gallons of wine bubbling away.

[sub82]

Our raspberry beer has actually taken a turn for the worse! The last bottle was volcanic and the entire contents came shooting out when I opened it, thankfully for some reason I was expecting it and opened it at the sink.

Would that have been some sort of infection? I did simmer the fruit for 5 minutes.

[mr hoppy]

I've used raspberries in a wit before using the freezing technique with good results.

I've not used strawberries and I've read (in Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing) that evev large qquantities of strawberries add little to beer flavour wise. He mentions that this is partly because they aren't acidic, whereas raspberries are.

I'm not sure I would but maybe using a small citric acid addition would increase perception on fruit.

The other issue with fruit is that it includes a lot of simple sugars which can dry your beer out a lot so it doesn't taste fruity. Adjusting to taste with splenda works here, though obviously with a small sample before dosing the whole batch!

[Cambrinus]

+1 on freeze thawing
I add fruit to the secondary and leave it there until the colour has been extracted from it.

Would you simmer the fruit first?

[St. Fursey]

+1 on freeze thawing
I add fruit to the secondary and leave it there until the colour has been extracted from it.

Would you simmer the fruit first?

I haven't bothered in the past but I don't fancy risking contracting Hep A so I might simmer them for the brew that's in the primary!